


Illya/Solo femslash drabbles and ficlets

by Blake, objectlesson



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Blood, F/F, Lesbians, Period Typical Homophobia, Trauma, Violence, cute 60s lesbians, girl!Illya, girl!Napoleon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 21:51:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17947766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake, https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: A collection





	1. "sick/injured and the Big Damn Kiss"

Apparently, Solo has been going about this all wrong. She has been working at Illya for weeks, like a storm working at a mountain slope. She’s been trying to wear her down, get her eroded and vulnerable enough that the rich soil beneath slips free and everything gets swept up in a delicious crash of destruction. Solo has always believed that destruction is just another word for new life. She wants Illya’s new life, the one where Illya lets herself act on her desires instead of pretending they do not exist.

So Solo has tried to get Illya drunk. She has tried to fluster Illya by asking her about sex, or by telling her about sex. She has made Illya dance with her, completely nude. She has slipped into Illya’s bed in the middle of the night for her body heat.

She has given Illya massages so long that her wrists ached afterward, just in case that would make her let her guard down. She has started fights with Illya, thrown just the right insults to make her upset and tear-exhausted.

She has done everything in her power to weaken Illya’s defenses. But apparently, all she needed to do was weaken her own.

Because here she is, gunshot wound in her thigh, trapped in an oven-temperature hut that’s too many miles through muggy rainforest from the nearest airlift site to risk leaving before Medical comes with a stretcher. It’s been days of agonizing pain and boredom with only the humming of bugs and shrieking of monkeys and Illya’s steady hands for entertainment—and all those hands have been doing has been cleaning and changing the dressings of her wound every two hours. The smell of her own sweat has Solo so nauseous that she keeps worrying that she’s gotten food poisoning from Illya’s never ending stash of freeze-dried rations and water bottles. The only time she’s allowed to move is to use the makeshift bed pan. It’s been five days since Solo has killed something, and she’s never wanted to kill something so badly.

And this— _this_ version of her. This is whom Illya chooses to kiss.

It’s just another wound dressing change. Solo has always had a healthy aesthetic appreciation for her own legs, but the way it looks now makes her stomach curl in disgust and self-loathing. She hates that she let this happen to herself. She hates that there’s a mangled red gash at the center of a giant black bruise, and dark hairs starting to sprout back to life right where Illya has to see them every time she does this. Really, Solo usually tries to use vanity as a weapon in her very practical arsenal, but five days of misery in the jungle has her feeling like her vanity has more control over her than she does over it.

She’s turning her face to the wall and trying to bite down her tears of frustration when suddenly, something wet and cool presses to the top of her thigh, between the top of the stitches and the crease of her sweaty, horrible underwear. She looks down and sees Illya—Illya kissing her thigh.

When Illya pulls up, she’s smiling up at Solo, cheeky and innocent all at once. “You are cute when you are like this,” Illya says, bafflingly.

“You mean when I’m about to murder you? Honestly, Peril, who kicks a pretty girl when she’s down?”

“I am not kicking,” Illya says thoughtfully, mulling over English in her head as she looks down to look at Solo’s thigh. Her fingers are long and careful, the circular movements as she wraps Solo’s leg up almost mesmerizing. Things grow quiet for a minute. Solo can’t believe Illya touched that with her lips. It’s haunting her brain, driving in like a shrill insect noise until it’s all she can think.

“I’m surprised you didn’t choke to death already on the smell down there.”

Illya shrugs. Of course she shrugs. She picks the most distressing times to act nonchalant instead of like a raging high-strung puzzle of a lunatic.

Solo doesn’t know what happens next. She has a handy little blind spot she keeps around for most pathetic moments. One second, her eyes are burning with the welling up of nonsensical tears, and the next, she’s hysterically screaming about everything under the sun. The pain, the lack of razors, how much she hates herself for wanting a razor more than she wants a glass of cold water, how horrible it is to not be able to move, how horrible it must be for Illya to touch that ugly thing, how she wishes she could just quit and go work as a counter girl at Macy’s, and how it’s not fair that Illya still looks so beautiful when she’s walking around in her soviet underwear, drenched in sweat.

But then Illya is kissing her.

Solo’s heart stops from shock, and then again when she realizes that she’s getting the thing that she’s been trying to get for months, and she doesn’t understand why. But it’s the best thing she’s felt in five days, that’s for sure. She surges up into it, assisted by the leverage provided by Illya’s firm hand on top of her hip, pinning it down responsibly to prevent her from moving her injured leg. 

But then Illya’s hand isn’t on her thigh anymore, because both of her hands are reaching into the rat’s nest of Solo’s hair and making fists in it, drawing her closer and aligning Solo right where she wants her. Right where she can slide her tongue in and taste the five days’ worth of pent up exhaustion and filth and freeze-dried food. Solo feels her eyes start to burn again.

Illya is breathing heavily right into her mouth, making these little mewling sounds, these goddamned _sounds_ that put butterflies in Solo’s stomach like she’s a schoolgirl all over again.

It isn’t until Solo draws Illya’s lip between her teeth and bites down and Illya whines so high-pitched and bears down until Solo’s head drops back onto the bed that Solo realizes—this is the most vulnerable she has ever seen Illya. Her defenses are down. This is the destruction, this is the new life.

So Solo scrapes her fingers into Illya’s sweat-matted blond hair and scratches lightly, sweetly along the back of her skull. With her other hand, she reaches carefully, ready to flee, for Illya’s naked waist. The skin shudders under her touch, and her ribcage violently expands under the slow, seeking press of her palm. Illya is letting her _touch her_.

And Solo is the one crying.

She feels Illya’s thumb brush curiously across the corner of her eye, gathering information like a scientist even when she’s practically drowning in a kiss. It takes her longer than Solo would have expected to realize that the wetness on her fingertip is a tear; when she does, she tries to pull back from the kiss. When Solo finally releases her bite on Illya’s lip so that she can pull back enough to look down, there’s a look of horror on Illya’s face. But at the same time, she’s flushed and goddamned lovely and looks like a girl who just got her first kiss.

Solo avoids the impending question of _why are you crying_. “Beautiful things make me cry, Peril.”

The horror fades somewhat, into a softer look of concern and consideration. Illya’s eyes are fixed on Solo’s mouth. “You make yourself cry,” she says.

Solo doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t even know what is happening. Has Illya gone crazy from the heat? Has she considered kissing Solo before? Has she kissed a girl before? Is this something she’ll want after they’re rescued tomorrow? How much does she know about herself?

But she does, somehow, feel pretty under Illya’s gaze. She bites her lip and twists it, feeling a bit more like herself. “I’ll give you one kiss for each one of your secrets.”

Illya’s jaw clenches, her pale, thin lips pressing into one of her trademark smirks. “Five minutes of kissing for each,” she counter-offers.

Solo lets both of her hands hold the hard, muscular sides of Illya’s square waist. “Ten minutes, and not a minute less,” she says before leaning up to put her lips against Illya’s once more.

If Illya notices the illogic of her bargaining method, she doesn’t mention it. 


	2. "in relief"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some gore and blood in this one

Illya stumbles out of the building, flanked by police and medics she doesn’t need. The three fascists she just apprehended are safely tied up in a closet on the fifth floor and she’s hardly even bleeding. It’s a minor scratch. 

One of the medics is drawing her toward an ambulance, ripping open the sleeve of her blouse like a fish that needs gutting.

“Illya,” someone cries from far away. It’s a nice voice. Illya thinks she knows it. There’s dark blood pooling in her palm, where it drips from the wound in her arm and collects, a miniature Black Sea. She giggles.

“Illya.” The voice is closer now, close enough Illya should be able to see. But her vision is blurred.

“Gunshot wound,” she hears a man say. Illya hates men. They’re cowardly enough to do things like shoot her, and they’re stupid enough to miss, pathetic enough to let her tie them up with only one uninjured arm. They talk about her like she’s a medical curiosity, a _gunshot wound_. She wishes Solo was here.

“Illya,” Solo says, suddenly _there_. It was _her_ voice Illya was hearing, unrecognizable in her delirium. Solo’s hands are on her face, cupping her jaw, brushing sweetly over her neck. Illya’s mouth waters, the way it always does when Solo is about to kiss her.

But they’re in _public_ , she realizes with a start. Her eyes open wide, taking in her blurry surroundings: the busy Manhattan street, the swarm of men in uniform, the crowd of bystanders. “We heard the gunshots from the next building over. Are you all right?” Solo asks. Her lips are perfectly painted, her skirt is unwrinkled, her eyes crystal blue and wet. She’s the only thing that’s in focus.

Solo’s face grows closer and Illya feels more fear than she did with a grazed arm and four men to face. Solo _can’t_ kiss her here. She can’t, because that would jeopardize the one and only thing that Illya treasures. More than her own safety, more than her life, she values being able to kiss Solo in the dark.

But Solo’s lips press close anyways, landing wetly on Illya’s cheek. Then on the other cheek, a fierce point of suction.

The medic pushes them apart, and across the distance, Solo sends her a stern look. “Don’t you dare die on me,” she says, her voice too soft and breathless to form a command.

Illya touches her fingertips to the red lipstick stain she knows is on her cheek. “I promise,” she says, staring into the eyes of the only thing that’s in focus. She _will_ get her kiss, her _real_ one, in the dark. “I promise.”

Solo bites her smeared lip. A thick pulse of blood gushes into Illya’s palm, trying to get to Solo. 


	3. "lazily"

Illya doesn’t open her eyes. She slides her tongue in deeper, filling up all the space in Solo’s swollen mouth. Her breaths fall out of her, heavy and wet. Solo draws it all in, using her clever tongue.

This woman, this crazy woman, tastes like _her_ , this taste she didn’t know a year ago, but has learned to recognize in all the times Solo has come back up to her, sticky and tangy-sweet. Some days, it makes Illya blush, still, when Solo crashes down on her, gasping and hungry from what Illya has done to her face. But Illya likes it best like this: slow, satisfied, leisurely so that she can lick the taste of Solo’s saliva out from underneath.

She drags her hands up her partner’s tapered ribcage to her bra, finding that one of her hands drags and sticks on her pale skin, still tacky from being inside her. Because Illya is a woman who _does_ this now, who lives in an apartment in the Village and cuts her hair short and curls her fingers deep inside other women and explodes with pleasure in other women’s mouths. One other woman, to be exact. Solo _is_ her insanity.

“You taste exquisite, _mon amour_ ,” Solo mumbles, this far removed language spoken into the cavern of a kiss where it’s safe and dark. Illya’s French is not great, and she sometimes still hears Solo’s whisper as _my death_ instead of _my love_. It’s a secret she keeps to herself, as she does with most of her fears.

“What part of me?” she asks, relaxed enough to tease. She likes it best like this, relaxed, kissed, in sheets that smell like her love. “Pollyana,” she adds with a smile.

Pollyana Solo does not answer, except to roll onto her back and pull Illya down on top of her, gasping as Illya’s tongue finds hers again. 


End file.
